It's my pleasure, Joy.
When I was in Jindabyne during the 2003 conflagration (in the Planning Section as an Air Observer) I became aware of the local (State MP) w@nking publicly in the Cooma paper stirring up similar arguments against National Parks personnel to the extent that they were being spat upon, in the street, by other locals; there were bits of ash landing in their back yards so tension was "elevated".

The same pollie came into the Fire Control Centre and demanded that the Incident Controller stop what he was doing (there were only nine separate Fireground Divisions being managed around all of the Alpine areas) and give him a briefing. The person at the reception desk was a Queensland Firefighter and didn't recognise him so he officiously informed her and repeated the demand. If I'd been within earshot of this he would have been frogmarched out the door and told to mind his Ps & Qs.

As it was, It has been my habit to write "Director's Notes" as a debriefing tool after such events and there was much praise heaped on the NPWS performance and a couple of "heads up's" for the RFS. Knowing that the RFS had a checkered history about acknowledging the worth of such information, I sent it also to the relevant Regional Director of NPWS and made sure the local NPWS staff got a copy; the pollie's actions were comprehensively described. At the State election a few months later I was interested to note that the pollie had lost his seat.

Ohhhhhh!

Cheers, Rowan